The pain and humiliation of a 34-29 loss at Washington in 2000 became the catalyst for Miami’s climb to the pinnacle of college football. Before they were upset by Ohio State in double overtime of the 2003 national title game, the Hurricanes had won 34 straight games and one national championship.
Hurricane warning: Miami now is just another team that lost its last game.
“Sometimes you get spoiled,” Miami coach Larry Coker said yesterday during the Big East teleconference. “We’ve been very fortunate here. We’re won a lot of games and sometimes you take that for granted.”
Starting with Thursday night’s opener at Louisiana Tech, the ‘Canes can take nothing for granted. The Bulldogs are led by quarterback Luke McCown, the nation’s leading passer last season. Miami will start Shreveport’s Brock Berlin at quarterback.
Berlin, who transferred to Miami in January, 2002, after two years of being Rex Grossman’s mop-up man at Florida, sat out last season because of NCAA transfer rules. He now replaces Ken Dorsey, who was 38-2 as a starter dating back to November of 1999.
“I feel really good about my progress,” Berlin said recently. “I feel like these past three years have been great training for me.”
Miami’s offseason strength-and-conditioning program is legendary – no team works harder, and the ‘Canes do it in the heat and humidity of the Florida summer. But the real oppression was the sting of last winter’s 31-24 double-OT loss to the Buckeyes in the Fiesta Bowl.
Said Coker of his players: “I think they’re working out with an attitude.”